


Carry On

by caitfair24



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1940s, Angst, F/M, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 22:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20786207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caitfair24/pseuds/caitfair24
Summary: Secrets tear apart Bucky’s engagement, leaving him confused and heartbroken. He’s convinced himself, however, that his fiancée must have had good reason to do what she did — he just needs to find out the truth.





	1. Summer

It was with a flagging sense of disappointment that Violet stepped from the train, stomach roiling with the sour pinch of indecision. How many times before had she come back from these trips, bright smile firmly in place, ready to resume the pattern of her New York days with all the aplomb of a mind well-satisfied and relieved? **  
**

Now – now she fiddled with the clasp of her handbag, reached to adjust her hat for the twentieth time in as many minutes. Now, she worried that her cheeks held still the tracings of two days’ of tears. Now, she thought about _him_. 

His eyes found her first, amidst the crush of strangers. Even a Sunday afternoon, sinking into early evening with the warm spice of salty air and that lingering tang of late summer, saw a swelling, jostling crowd pour from the train carriages. Back from a weekend in the country; a day at the beach. Anything to claim some reprieve from the oppressive heat of the city. 

And yet, Violet was _home_ – home to her reprieve. As always, the tangled perfume of smoke and tar and progress filled her soul with that strange sense of fulfillment. Reminiscent of London in all the right ways, New York held a charm she had not anticipated, embodied best in that bright blue gaze. The press of his lips against her cheek, chaste enough for public. 

“Hiya, honey,” he said softly, taking the battered suitcase from her other hand. “I missed you.” 

Their usual exchange: _I missed you; I was only gone two days; Got _real_ lonesome, if you catch my drift; Oh, Bucky love, stop._

A surefire way to earn laughs and ribbing from other disembarking passengers: it was a language they’d worked on together, built in small moments these past three years. Coy hints of what was to come; bedroom-promises carved into the gold winking from her left hand. As the loose wedding plans (New Year’s Eve; a small, family affair; his mother’s famous chocolate cake) came to shape, Bucky had gotten bolder in all the right ways. 

But now, standing on the platform, her best summer dress dusty at the hem and the weight of a new future in her hands, Violet simply burst into tears. 

The next few minutes unfolded in a wet blur; Bucky steering her gently to a quieter spot on the sidewalk, sobs bubbling up wildly, leaving no room for words between. He tossed out sweet names, a joke; rubbed at her shoulders and her back and pressed her close against his chest until some woman sniffed disapprovingly and the next thing Violet knew, she was sliding into a wooden booth and a steaming cup of coffee was placed in front of her. 

“Vi, honey, you’ve got tell me what’s going on,” Bucky said lowly, rummaging through her purse for a hanky. “Talk to me — something didn’t happen on the train, did it?”

An old man with kindness in his bones and five thousand years in his voice had held her hand for three hours; together, they’d stroked uncertainly over the past. A city, smashed to rubble and stone and stripped to the aching, raw nerve of her; he had darker stories to tell, and shielded her from every one; telling her instead of the candlelight glow on his daughter’s face; of sweet breads and the cool rush of a river against his skin. 

And beyond that — she’d told him of another man. Younger, of course, but old to her. Summer in his eyes all year ‘round and joy woven into his every movement. A hero in olive-green; champion, maybe a young god slid from myth into the dust and the dirt of an unknown grave. Still soaked in his own blood, no rites but the ministrations of a stranger’s shovel. 

The pain of that unfolding scraped at her now, even as Bucky ordered her favourite carrot cake and pushed the mug closer. “Honey?” 

Oh, he was lovely. A real prize, that’s what the other girls said. Handsome war-hero, with or without his left arm, Bucky had come back to Brooklyn with dozens of headlines attached to his name. Started his own garage and never once called Captain America anything other than Steve Rogers. 

He was a man of routine, of ritual. Saturday mornings at the library had been, for months, her least favourite shift, until he’d started coming in. Checking out two books and giving her a smile that seemed to grow ever sweeter and wider each week. Slowly, “_Miss Cooper_” had become “_honey_” and “_doll_” and “_angel_,” and eventually, over a slice of carrot cake, “_Violet_.” 

Violet and James. 

Names strung together so neatly and prettily it was as though, his mother said, they were always meant to be twined thus. Theirs had been a carrot-cake courtship, all innocent dates and hands on the right side of the table; evenings with his mother and chaperoning his sister on her own dates. Until the night, a little liquor on their tongues, the world had slid funnily and he’d pressed her back gently against a brick wall, fitting against her in a way that made her think of stars shifting and burning, wounds in a galaxy that seared so beautifully. 

And she’d cried into his neck, told him in plain, shy words of the ache of two and a half years, of desire that burned so hot it hurt — deep in the night. “Oh, honey,” he’d groaned. “Let me take care of you, huh?”

Beer and frayed inhibitions; starlight and a late, late curfew — but despite all that, she went to sleep with the same ache. That same ache between her legs and a circle of gold on her left hand. 

She fiddled with that now, under the harsh, fluorescent glow of the overhead lights. Bucky asked her again, worry and fear licking cruel flames at the edge of every word. “Violet, talk to me, please. Did something happen with your aunt? Or on the train? Did anyone…” 

He closed his eyes; swallowed against the implication. Hatpins worked on well enough on the subway, but train compartments…

“No, no, I’m fine,” she blubbered, dabbing self-consciously at her nose. “I just…I…oh, James, I don’t know where to start.” 

How did one go about breaking a heart? Does it begin with a crack, a creak, a crumble? A chink in the armour; a flaw exposed? 

Should she strike at their weaker moments — for there had been those — and hope that the fault-line would open wider? That time they’d argued over his job; her hours. A dress she couldn’t afford. A friend’s wedding. Baseball teams and unravelling her past and why he wouldn’t go to VA meetings. Why she wouldn’t talk about the mornings she came to him with dark, deep, nightmare-bruises curving under her eyes. 

Bucky reached now, taking her hand in his. Rubbing one thumb against warm, salt-stained flesh and smiling a soft smile. “At the beginning, baby. Just start with what you can. But I need you tell me what’s got you so worked up.”

On the train, she’d told the old man about her fiancé. Dark hair that curled when the air grew damp or he’d spent too long under the hood of a car. Blue eyes that saw, she was sure, her soul. A cheeky, crooked smile and a penchant for small, innocent trouble. 

“Is he a good man?” her new friend had asked. 

“The best,” she’d said. No hesitation. No dithering about adjectives or explanations. Love weighed more than enough to support such a claim. He wasn’t just a good man; he was the best. And he was hers. 

He wanted to be married in the New Year, to claim 1949 for themselves. “I’m gonna love you at midnight, honey,” he’d breathed into her ear, the night his parents had hosted an engagement party. “And I’m gonna love for every minute of every year after that.” 

Her dress had a low waist; pearl buttons. There were hints about lingerie, secrets of slips and garters and lace she knew something about, but not everything. Secrets she could teach _him_. 

Secrets. Oh-so-heavy. The weight of stolen childhoods, broken hearts. Thick paper, soaked through with death; blood drip-drip-dripping through her dreams…

Violet choked down a sip of coffee, but the taste was ashes in her mouth. There was no room for flavour, for anything other than the crisp, precise weight of horror on her tongue. Horror for what she was about to do, what she was about to say. 

“James,” she said again. Anchoring herself to the moment, to the bright blue hope in his gaze. To the lilting poem of his mouth, for the memory of the warm way it slid against hers. Rocketed heat through her bones and made her feel so, so wanted. “James, I have to tell you something.” 

Her gulping sobs had faded now, but tears still streamed down her cheeks. Hot and chilling in turns, they skated slick as a fever against her skin and Violet made no move to wipe them away. Instead she loosened her hand from his and buried the past; the bright, soft moments of courting and new love; the comfort of settling firm against the contours of a person, finding another soul that fit yours in all the right ways. 

As though she’d crawled through a desert, a ravaged landscape, on bloody fingernails — and then looked up. To see him. An ocean in his eyes and love on his lips and all the joy she had thought the world sapped of held in the palm of his steady hand. 

The hand she let go of; the hand that curved around forever. 

The hand she could not hold now, not anymore. Not with this changed future; these notes played out of tune. “James,” she said. A fourth time. No _Bucky_, no _love_. No _silly boy_ or _cheeky monkey_. 

Just _James_. An anybody name. 

Her finger had swollen in the late summer heat; it took a fumbling, red-faced, nauseous century to slide the ring loose. 

It hit the centre of his palm like a death knell. 

“James, I-I can’t marry you. I’m sorry.” 


	2. Autumn

Time moved in strange ways, Bucky thought, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. Nearly three months had passed since the day in the diner, but he felt as though he’d aged ten years. And as though just five minutes before, Violet’s hand had been in his, her lips curving into that pretty smile. **  
**

Heartbreak was a dark dream, a nightmare, sitting in the pit of his stomach all day long. The simplest tasks brought her careening to the forefront of his mind. Coffee, the mere scent of it, could leave him with a swollen throat and eyes stinging with hot tears. She’d never had a coffee in her life before her first date with him, when she’d sipped daintily from the mug he’d ordered and scrunched up her nose in dismay. 

After, Bucky had pressed his lips to the same spot on the rim of the cup, finishing the drink, a kiss with no contact that had, to his mortification, stirred his body after years of war-enforced chastity. 

Books, overdue and unfinished, sat on his nightstand; he had yet to be able to return to the library, and refused to let Rebecca or his mother drop them off for fear they would encounter her, too. Confusion had given way to anger, and then to a wistful, sore sadness – for the whole family, really. In three months, Mrs Barnes had yet to make Italian wedding soup. 

Violet’s favourite. 

_He’d_ once been Violet’s favourite. Lipstick kisses tattooing his neck; soft, breathy sighs echoing prettily in his ears. A future brimming bright and full in their hands. Fifty years, he figured — fifty years or more. All the time he had dreamt about in dusty foxholes, dangerous sniper perches. A woman he hadn’t yet known; a warm hand in his; sunny sidewalks and peaceful days.

But now…

Now Bucky worked extra shifts until his palm dried and split; fell asleep to the cold, deep embrace of amnesia, though she always found him in his dreams. Violet in her blue dress, spinning in his arms. Dying as she danced across a battlefield, mouth spilling secrets he couldn’t hear. 

And sometimes he dreamt of warmer things. Mysteries he hadn’t unlocked. Sweat dripping sweet and secret; cries cutting on the ragged edge between anguish and ecstasy. Taking her to pretty pieces, bringing her together again with the warm press of his mouth. 

No. 

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to quell the rising tide of desire. Losing Violet — that was the only way he could bring himself to think of it, as though he’d misplaced her, sent her off without a map — stroked a strange rhythm. Pain and pleasure: the agony of how she had broken his heart; and the soft joy she had brought him, lingering in the corners of his soul. His mind. His heart. 

What was left of it, anyway. 

Just gone three on a Saturday afternoon, and he’d already whiled away two hours with unnecessary jobs. The shop had been tidied down to the last bolt; papers sorted and no more appointments. Once, such an afternoon would have warranted Violet’s hand in his, wedding planning over ice cream, or coffee. 

That burned now. Stung in small places, in the ragged corners of who he had been with her. Violet’s fiancé, Violet’s _James_. _Bucky _when he made her laugh; _love_ when she smiled. 

Love – he’d used the word liberally these past few years. Soaked so many moments in it, claimed an identity against the soft edges of it. 

Wiping grease from his hand, Bucky thought of the first time they’d met. The crowded crush of the subway at five o’clock on a Thursday. Rain streaking the world grey and unfriendly, Bucky had found himself taking a train home after a disappointing meeting at the bank. Only to be pulled, it seemed, into a dampened, impatient frenzy of waiting commuters. 

He’d stumbled, still getting used to the weight and presence of his new prosthetic, when a man had brushed by him, sending Bucky careening gently into the soft press of a wool coat and a kind smile. _Violet_. 

They’d reached for her dropped newspaper at the same moment, fingers brushing overtop a half-finished crossword. Deep brown eyes, shy smile. For the first time in months, Bucky had felt _something_ – something other than bewilderment, shame. Restlessness. Fear. 

Nerves, yes, but a flip-flopping, lukewarm kind of joy. A shiver when her fingers accidentally grazed his wrist; mouth gone dry when she smiled wider. “Thank you,” she’d said, crisp and sweet, making him think of fresh apples. October skies. She was autumn in a red coat, pretty as a picture. 

And she hadn’t recoiled. Hadn’t let those brown eyes slide past the haunted, hollow soldier with ghosts in his gaze. 

He’d stood next to her on the subway, by chance and luck – looking over her shoulder as she rapidly solved the day’s crossword puzzle in neat, minuscule letters. Every now and then, she’d glanced back at him, stifling a giggle when the train had lurched forward, and he’d stumbled against her back. Apologizing profusely. 

Bucky chewed on his lip, two and a half years later, to remember, with a reel of half-shame, half-humour, the tingling in his spine, the tightening of his trousers. 

Even then, he’d known. Known she was special, known he was on the cusp of something new. Brighter, and better. Softer and sweeter. 

“_Peep_,” he’d suggested lightly, clearing his throat. Flushing when her warm eyes had touched him, a quirk of scarlet lips. “I, uh” – daring to loosen his hand from the pole, Bucky had pointed to an empty set of squares on the crossword – “‘tiny complaint.’ A peep, right?” 

Ten more minutes and eight more clues, and Bucky had fallen firmly in love – or at least, infatuation – by the time Violet had jotted down “_pugilist_” to connect to “_peep_,” and asked him for a three-letter word for a dessert. 

“Pie?” he’d guessed, helping her step from the train. Entranced by the way her hand had fit so neatly in his, bright-varnished nails softening even the faint spider-work of scars against his skin. 

A smile. A smile that sent heat straight to his bones, flickering to life something he’d thought lost in bitter snow, or a French hospital cot. “I’d love some,” Violet said, before she was Violet, before she was anything more than soft hands and an English accent. And the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. 

No pie that day, Bucky recalled now, grabbing his lunch pail and locking up. Just carrot cake. Carrot cake and a mapping of a new route, a direction he had not anticipated. 

And now, without her, he was just so… lost. 

* * *

“You’re not eating.” Mrs Barnes’ mouth twisted with worry, buttering another slice of bread and adding it to the stack at Bucky’s wrist. “Jamie –”

“I’m fine, Ma.” A huge spoonful of chicken stew, and a weak smile. “Just a little distracted.”

Heartache had that habit, didn’t it? Pulled the rug out from under his feet, kept him up at night. Fractured his concentration, so that in the middle of an oil change, he thought about the way Violet’s kisses got lazy when she was sleepy; the way his right arm had curled around her in a dark movie house. The furrow in her brow when she was engrossed in a book or crossword puzzle. 

The sigh in her voice when he held her hand. 

A shove from his sister jolted Bucky from those thoughts, memories. She’d slid into the chair that had always been Violet’s – after he’d proposed, she’d started coming over nearly every night, sitting close enough to Bucky that she could rest her hand on his knee, lean into his side. Steal bites from his plate. 

He swallowed. Reached for another piece of bread and tried very hard to focus on Rebecca, and whatever she was saying. “You got a letter from the library this morning,” she repeated sternly, shaking his shoulder to ensure he was looking right at her. “Four dollars, you meatball. _Four_ dollars.” 

Late fees. 

Bucky groaned, thinking of the sizeable stack of books – some of his own choosing, some Violet had recommended or simply slid into his pile during his last Saturday browsing before…before…

Three months. For so many books, some on a week-only loan. Mrs Barnes caught his eye from across the table, and stood, reaching for the cookie jar as Rebecca continued. “They want the books back, too,” she said, taking a sip of his milk. “It came from the head librarian. The scary one. With the eyebrows.” 

Mr Thomson – Bucky released a deep sigh, biting into a raisin cookie, remembering the time Mr Thomson had surprised him and Violet in the reference section, tangled in warm spring kisses, her arms around his neck. Whether or not the move had been entirely professional on her part, Bucky hadn’t much cared at the time. 

Now – now he did. 

A glance at the kitchen clock – he had just under forty minutes to get to the library. Pay his fine, drop off the books. And maybe…

No. 

He was torn between bolting out and just waiting for Monday (Violet rarely worked the Monday shift; he’d always managed to arrange his appointments, too, so that he was off at noon, and they’d go to the park, or a diner, or the front room of her boardinghouse).

The boardinghouse, he thought, where she apparently no longer lived. Two days after the break-up at the diner, when she’d practically sprinted from the table, leaving him holding two pieces of his heart, unsure of how to put them back together without her – Bucky had arrived with a plate of his mother’s gingersnap cookies, Violet’s favourite, and better, to her, than flowers. 

Only to be informed by her landlady that she’d moved, leaving no forwarding address. 

In fact, Bucky thought rapidly up in his bedroom, tugging himself into his second outfit, after a rapid shave and a quick dousing at the washbasin – how could he even be certain she was still working at the library? What if she truly had simply up and left? Him, her home, her job? 

“_You don’t know anything about her,_” his mother had said, at four o’clock in the morning, as he choked on tears and whiskey at the kitchen table, nearly a week after it had happened. When the shock had finally managed to seep through. 

And technically, that was true, Bucky realized dully, gathering up the books and checking his hair one more time in the mirror above his dresser. Much of Violet’s life was a mystery to him – he knew only that she was from London, had moved to New York after the war. That she loved crossword puzzles and Brontë novels. 

That she loved _him_. 

He thought she had. 

Rebecca and his mother, in the months since, had grieved for the relationship in their own way. Hurt, anger. Confusion. And then, blistering hindsight – “_She kept herself a mystery from you, Jamie. And that would’ve come back to bite the two of you. As much as I loved her, maybe this is for the best._”

They pointed to the weekends away, at her aunt’s house upstate; that she’d never invited him along. That the only real knowledge of her life before was simply that her father’s name had been Bill and her mother’s Ivy; that she had worked as a secretary during the war years.

But he loved her. For Bucky, everything came spiralling firmly back to that point. He loved her, he wanted to marry her. Move into some poky little apartment and spend more time in bed than anywhere else. Spend Sunday afternoons with his head on her lap, solving crossword puzzles and listening to her voice stroke so prettily over poetry, novels – hell, he’d take the front page of the newspaper, if that’s what she wanted to read. 

He just wanted her. His Vi. 

His Vi, her pretty head bent over the front desk of the library, looking like springtime in a green dress, hair pinned back just so, shining bright. A small string of pearls around her neck, a neat little black cardigan about her shoulders – he’d never seen it before. 

_That_ hurt more than anything else – that he’d grown unfamiliar with elements of her life. A sweater he’d never seen before, when once Bucky had been thoroughly well-acquainted with every piece of clothing she’d owned. 

She glanced up as he cleared his throat, landing those warm brown eyes and a bewildered smile right on him, and for a brief second, it was the old days, the better days – and he was there to pick her up, to walk her home, to take her dancing. “Oh,” she said faintly, a note of trepidation more than apparent in the broken edges of the word, smile sliding loose. “J- Mr Barnes.”

_Mr Barnes_. 

Ice shot through him, ice and hurt and he honestly didn’t mean to set the stack of books down quite _so_ hard on the desk, and oh – she jumped. Jumped and swallowed hard, eyes sparkling with tears, and Bucky wanted to understand – if she was hurting, too, then why had she given the ring back? Why had she moved house without telling him where she was going? 

Why had she cancelled the flowers and the church hall? Why had she broken his heart?

He should’ve asked. Should’ve laid out his pain on the desk, right on top of that copy of _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_. 

But instead, he watched her move methodically through the check-in process, fingers trembling around her stamp. Nails unpainted – unusual for her, he thought sadly. Maybe that was another sign that she felt just as bad? 

“Four dollars, right?” he asked hoarsely, reaching for his wallet. “I can –” 

“No, Mr Barnes.” Brown eyes swimming, she looked up at him with a soft smile. “There is no charge.”

No charge, no change. No moving forward – bitterness, cut now with a kind of flattened joy. But that was _something_, wasn’t it? Waiving those fees, that cute little smile? “Honey,” Bucky said – firmly, lovingly. “Can we…I mean, can we go for a…I’d like to talk…”

She chewed at her bottom lip, and a grin twitched at his own – Violet had a habit of doing that when she wanted to be kissed, whether she was aware of it or not. A blush flooded her cheeks as his eyes darted down to her mouth and then back up again, leaning closer over the desk, knowing she could smell his aftershave, his soap. Hoping she saw how easy this could be, healing this heartbreak – now that they were together again, face-to-face after three months apart. “James, I –”

“Excuse me, ma’am?” A tall, slim woman with a pigtailed girl on each hand came smiling around the corner, nodding at Bucky before turning to Vi. “Just thought I’d let you know that your son fell asleep in the children’s room. Looked pretty tuckered out.” 

He scarcely heard her polite, hurried reply – blood pounding in his ears and why was his left shoulder aching all of a sudden? _Son_. Son? No, there must be some mistake. Violet didn’t have a child, she would’ve told him, she would’ve trusted him. She’d never even been married – 

Or had she? 

Bucky watched with numb detachment as Violet checked out a few storybooks for the little girls, chatted distractedly with the mother. All the while thinking about a boy with her brown eyes, all those weekends away. The mystery of the “aunt” she’d never wanted to introduce him to; the limited information she’d offered these past two and a half years. 

“_She kept herself a mystery from you, Jamie.” _

And maybe it was for the best – that was Bucky’s last nauseated, thunderous thought, as he stumbled his way from the library, chest strained and tears stinging his eyes. Aching and sore because she wasn’t calling after him, because Violet had lied and left him and that half-formed future – crossword puzzles and afternoons in bed – had now been firmly shattered. 


End file.
